With the same spirit that pushes
us to test what we have been collectively taught and what we individually understand,
there is also the need to challenge our popular voices and public figures.It is well documented how Cornel West and
Tavis Smiley have been appropriating this call to challenge, by critiquing and
criticizing President Barack Obama. But it is a specific recent incident
involving Dr. West, where the professor rebukes the President for using Dr.
King’s bible to take the oath for his second term, that is concerning and
requires evaluation and analysis.

What I find most interesting
about Mr. West’s tirade is the relative amnesia it perpetrates regarding Dr.
King's legacy as a leader.King was
brilliant; a tireless worker; and a man of great dignity and fortitude. But during the entire period of the
Civil Rights Movement, and the more expansive Black Freedom Movement,
Dr. King was routinely criticized by those inside the movement for being:

Too complicit to the political
mainstream.

Too accommodating of those
resistant to anti-racist laws and legislation.

Too comfortable with the bourgeois
and liberals, and not “down enough” with those suffering in both urban and
rural slums and ghettos

Noted figures like Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael,
James Foreman, Ella Baker, Diane Nash, along with lesser-known members of SNCC, CORE, and
other progressive organizations and grassroots efforts were routinely
disappointed and upset at King for either some or all of the reasons listed above.To the present moment, what are Dr. West’s
problems with President Obama’s political actions and economic philosophy?

“When you look at a
society you look at it through the lens of the least of these, the weak and the
vulnerable; you are committed to loving them first, not exclusively, but first,
and therefore giving them priority.”

“I figured, OK, given
the structure of constraints of the capitalist democratic procedure that’s
probably the best he could do. But at least he would have some voices concerned
about working people, dealing with issues of jobs and downsizing and banks,
some semblance of democratic accountability for Wall Street oligarchs and
corporate plutocrats who are just running a muck. I was completely wrong.”

“He’s a black mascot
of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.”

The point is not to equalize Martin
Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama, nor to be an apologist for both.Too often we make our analyses as if they are
part of a zero-sum game; or we explain complexities as mutually exclusive
phenomenon which cannot intersect or interact.

Going back to the earlier point
about contextualization, an important reason for holistically understanding Dr.
King’s activism and intellectual thought, and particularly his move towards
eradicating poverty and promoting economic democracy, is that he was pushed to
these actions by his dissenters and by critiques from the Left.The young people in Watts who rejected his
prescriptions after the 1965 rebellion; the more radical elements of student
organizers that wanted him to challenge the exclusion and inequality produced
by the U.S. racial system in direct and confrontational language, not conciliatorily
and passively; and the labor leaders and intellectuals that pressed upon him
the urgency and profoundness of employment discrimination and economic
exploitation—these are the central factors that led King to
widen his scope and broaden his goals.In large part, that is how he ends up in Chicago protesting housing
discrimination in 1966, at Riverside Church speaking out against the war in
1967, and organizing workers in Memphis in 1968.The public nudges and private pushes King
received from supporters and others, caused him to make a political move to his
left.

Perhaps that is Dr. West’s
intention with the cajoling and agitation he has presented President
Obama.That in fact he wants Obama to be
much more like the King of 1965-1968.It
certainly seems that this is his intention, given the comments he made regarding
Dr. King’s bible.

But to hear West tell it, Martin
Luther King Jr. was always the King of 65-68, and thus always articulated those political objectives. Careful historical examination, and a strong call to our
historical memory, reminds us that in fact this is not true. King was just as flawed and problematic then,
as West believes Obama is now. And to
that point, dissenting and challenging the President is necessary—especially on
the economic issues and militarism.But the lesson
regarding King that Brother West needed to emphasize was how our leaders in the
establishment can be compelled to become more populist and more
progressive.Especially with President
Obama arguably holding the more pronounced public profile that any Black figure
has held since Dr. King, and during a period of social unrest and political economic
transformation that threatens to markedly impact this country’s trajectory
during the rest of the twenty-first century, we desperately need to understand
how organizing, advocacy, and activism can influence the establishment and
direct political will.

"When we elevate
leaders of particular movements to the mythic status of great man or woman, we
do a disservice to everyone. By placing people on a historical pedestal, we
forget that they grew, learned, made mistakes, and struggled throughout the
tenure of their leadership, and we forget that these leaders were mentored,
collaborated with other leaders, and had to get their followers to believe in
their own capacity to step up and lead. Hero-worship relegates the work,
thought, and effort of 'ordinary people' to something akin to pleasant
background music. Local agents for change and progress lose their voice, and
are mercilessly converted into mindless, thoughtless followers of the great man
or woman who 'leads' them.”

“In order for us to
understand and build on this history, we must honor the true leadership
paradigm where leaders at all levels - those few who get recognized and the
countless others who contribute silently - are necessary for change."

It will take the many hands that will struggle in the future, and the ones that have already worked in the past, to create the broad
based leadership and mass movement we need in order to actualize “the change we
can believe in.”Not solely the hands
that have touched one leader’s bible.

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Michael is Chief Research and Policy Officer for Young Movement Inc. He also is the co-founder and co-director of The Bronx Brotherhood Project, a community-based youth development program designed to provide college readiness and adult male mentorship to low-income Bronx Black and Latino high school males.

Born, raised, and currently living in the South Bronx, he is a political economist, ethnographer, and educator. His writing centers on how innovation and diversity becomes the expertise and cultural capital of millenials. Michael's work in local communities focuses on practices and models that create sustainability, and economic development premised on entrepreneurship, local ownership, social mission-orientated private sector efforts, and the development of small and medium sized businesses.

FROM THE LENS OF A HIP-HOP BABY

Articles, editorials, commentaries, essays, and other writings here that shares a part of myself with the world. Read, criticize, argue, debate freely; BUT do so in the spirit of love, in a commitment to better this world, and to bridge the racial, social, and economic problems of this world.